Widespread internet outages have rocked various countries across Africa, including South Africa, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso, leaving millions frustrated.
While services have been partially restored in Liberia and South Africa, the cause of the cable failures remains shrouded in mystery, much to the dismay of customers continent-wide.
“There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa,” remarked Cloudflare Radar, a provider of internet connection information.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) attributed the outage to damage sustained by international undersea cables along the West African coastline. “The cuts occurred somewhere in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, with an attendant disruption in Portugal,” explained NCC spokesman Reuben Muoka.
The severity of the situation was emphasized by fashion designer Cheick Senou from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, who lamented, “It’s been impossible to communicate with my clients – I also needed to organize a delivery though an online app. I couldn’t do anything without the internet.”
Internet connectivity plummeted in affected countries, with Ivory Coast experiencing a mere 4% connectivity rate, while Liberia dropped to 17%, Benin to 14%, and Ghana to 25%, according to Netblocks, a cybersecurity and internet connectivity tracking organization.
In South Africa, Vodacom reported intermittent connectivity issues due to multiple undersea cable failures, exacerbating the disruption. A fault on the MainOne cable system serving Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos, further compounded the crisis.
The Liberian government confirmed widespread internet disruption, crippling basic internet access, social media platforms, and international transactions, leaving citizens like Benjamin Garkpah and Fatumata Barry in Monrovia facing dire consequences.
The Liberia Telecommunications Authority attributed the incident to an incident involving the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine communications cable in Ivory Coast.
Similarly, in Ghana, the National Communications Authority (NCA) identified multiple undersea cable disruptions as the root cause of the outage, exacerbating the continent-wide chaos.
SOURCE: BBC
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